Parents answer 'tweens' unceasing call for cell phones

April 08, 2007|By Lisa W. Foderaro, New York Times News Service

To her parents' amusement, Hannah Stacks, a 3rd grader in Rye, N.Y., started asking for her own cell phone at age 6. To their consternation, she never stopped. Last fall, after a psychologist suggested tracking her behavior, Hannah, at the sprightly age of 8, got her phone as a reward for not being mean to her little sister for 30 days.

"I was so torn because, of course, I wanted her to stop beating on Kate," said Hannah's mother, Kim O'Connor, a clinical social worker. "But I also thought, at the end of 30 days, what will I have done?"

After securing a foothold in the teenage market, cell phones are quickly emerging as the must-have techno-toy among elementary-school society. Companies are sating the appetite and expanding demand by offering special phones for children such as the bright blue Firefly, which features only five keys, including ones with icons for speed-dialing a parent, and allows users to call a maximum of 22 numbers.

Industry analysts say the 'tween market, defined as 8- to 12-year-olds, represents one of the major growth opportunities for the wireless industry. Some 6.6 million of the 20 million American children in that age range had cell phones by the end of 2006, according to an analysis by the Yankee Group, a technology consulting firm in Boston, which projects there will be 10.5 million pre-teen cell phone users by 2010.

The number of 8-year-olds with phones, Yankee Group estimates, more than doubled to 506,000 during the last four years while the number of 9-year-olds jumped to 1.25 million from 501,000.

Children want a cell phone for reasons obvious to them. It looks cool and makes them feel grown-up. It conveys a certain status. And it lets them stay in near-constant touch with friends and (oh, yeah) parents.

Tricky decision

For parents, the decision of when, or whether, to buy children cell phones is emotionally charged and value-laden, raising ticklish questions about safety and status, maturity and materialism.

Some parents and child psychologists say the need for cell phones among such young children, who are rarely without adult supervision, is marginal, and the gadgets serve mainly as status symbols, quickly lost in a tangle of toys, batteries hopelessly out of juice. Others, though, say the phones are an electronic security blanket for both parent and child in a world of two-career households and split-custody arrangements, Amber alerts and color-coded terror threat levels.

"My kids are never left alone, so this is an emergency backup system," said Cindy O'Neill Vitale, who bought cell phones last summer for her sons, then 8 and 10, before a weeklong vacation with family friends. "I honestly believe that we live in a time now where it's important to be able to have access for whatever reason. God forbid there's another 9/11. I was in the city that day and I couldn't reach them."

Redeeming value?

Dr. Cornelia Brunner, deputy director of the Center for Children and Technology, a non-profit research group in Manhattan, said cell phones can serve as "transitional objects" for young children suffering separation anxiety from their parents and that phones with "reasonably interesting games" might have some "redeeming educational value."

But despite the popularity of the child-friendly phones, some analysts say they have a short shelf life because what seems cool to a 7-year-old feels babyish to a middle-schooler. Audrey Gray, a single mother in Philadelphia who shares custody of her son, Jackson, 8, and travels on business once or twice a month, said that when she first bought her son a phone at age 7, he "was like a jealous boyfriend calling me all the time."

"He'd call me from the cafeteria, screaming, 'Mom, I'm at lunch,' and I said, 'Great, buddy. How's it going?' and he yelled, 'Good. Do you want to talk to Gabe?' Then he called me from math class and was whispering, 'Hey, Mom, I was just calling to see how you are,'" she recalled. "Then I never heard from him again."